DAY 18- Recap on Body Image & Scale

January 18, 2015January 22, 2015 | Robynn Coates

Great Job!!

As we wrap up the week of Body Image & the Scale of the Peace with Food challenge picture this: You now and you at the end of your life.

The truth is, you are going to spend that time – the time between now and the end of your life – some way. Of course, you get to choose. So, the question is, how do you want to spend that time? Here’s a couple options:

Option #1: Spend the time focused on your #PEACE which will bring lasting results and impact every area and relationship of your life. OR
Option #2: Spend the time focused on your body and the # on the scale which can’t bring any lasting peace and satisfaction.

We hope that after going through this week, if you struggle with your body image or the scale, that at the very least you have been challenged to take a different perspective. Why not change from # on the scale to #PEACE? We did and wouldn’t go back for nothing! 😉

Here is a summary of the posts from this week’s discussion (click on underlined words to read that post):

-An overview of your Body Image & the Scale.
-How to have Peace with Your Body.
-Sharing Strategies with the Scale.
-Discussing the Insanity with the Scale.
–What We Obsess About But No One Thinks About.
-Determining What Will Keep You in the Game.

On Day 12, we had you rate your level #peace in regards to your body image & the scale. After discussing these topics this week, we want you to rate your current level #peace again.

Posse Discussion:

In regards to body image & the scale, what was your level #peace on Day 12 ? What is it today? Has your number increased or decreased? Why?

Join us tomorrow as we dive into Exercise!

Click Here for Day 19!

Day 17- What Will Keep You In The Game?

January 17, 2015January 20, 2015 | Robynn Coates

One question we ask our selves often is, “What will keep me in the game?”

That’s because we are in this for life, so it is important to us that we make choices that we will be happy with not just now, not just in the future, but both now and the future.

Now and the future.

Those are two words that could never be used together before our Peace with Food days. That’s because it was always one extreme or the other.

On our binging days our focus was on the now.

On our dieting days our focus was on the future.

And never the two shall meet.

Then came Peace with Food. We learned to look at our life not just in the context of our present, but also in the context of our future. We were able to tie them together, making the wisest choice, resulting in us having peace.

Here’s an example of what that looks like:

No more passing up a holiday meal because of a goal to get to a certain weight somewhere out in the future.
No more foregoing the self-control and discipline today that will impact our health and well-being in the future.

The two act as boundary lines like the lines on the highway. All you have to do is keep it between the lines.

We now frame all our decisions on the now and the future. What will give us peace now? What will give us peace in the future? That’s what will keep us in the game.

Posse Discussion:

In the last 17 days we have discussed peace with food, body image and the scale. Out of these three topics, what 1 thing have you learned about yourself that will keep you in the game in regards to living with peace?

Click Here for Day 18!

DAY 16- What We Obsess About (But No One Else Thinks About)

January 16, 2015January 17, 2015 | Robynn Coates

What we In college, I took voice lessons every semester as part of my music education degree. In order to graduate, one of the requirements was a senior recital. This concert consisted of a solo performance lasting over thirty minutes. Just the idea of singing that long makes a person’s throat hurt, and standing alone in front of a crowd with all eyes on you can bring one to even more of a panic!

My voice professor told me, “When you are up on stage, don’t worry about the audience and what they are thinking. Believe it or not, they won’t be thinking about you. People are too consumed thinking about themselves, they won’t focus solely on you for very long.”

I had never given it much thought, but what he said seemed to be true. When you step inside someone’s new house, you typically think to yourself how you wish you had the same house or perhaps you compare it to your own home. If you see a child acting out in the grocery store, your thoughts immediately focus on how you, “hope my kids don’t do that to me when I’m in public.” Rarely do we pick apart the other person without eventually turning the focus back on ourselves.

The same applies to body image. Despite the stress of singing in front of a crowd, the one thing I was paranoid about during my recital was how chunky my arms looked in my performance gown. If I had asked every person in the audience what they were thinking as I stood on stage, I could almost guarantee no one would have mentioned my chunky arms.

We become so paranoid with certain areas of our body we forget that no one thinks about our bodies the way we do. If you lose weight, people look at you and think, “Oh…I need to hit the gym.” The focus on you may only be for a second but they are mostly thinking about how they need to eat better or improve a certain part of their physique.

So next time you are in a panic over a couple-pound increase, or a specific area of your body, remind yourself that no one else will even notice.

Keep calm and carry on. There is no need to fret over something no one else is even thinking about.

Posse Discussion: This week we talked about areas of our bodies in which we are self-conscious. Are you ready to “let go” of that area? How can you have peace with this part of your body? i.e. accept it, work to change it, change your perspective, etc.

Click here for more ideas on how to have peace with your body.

Click Here for Day 17!

DAY 15- Different Approaches w/ The Scale

January 15, 2015January 17, 2015 | Robynn Coates

Everyone is unique, which means we are all motivated by different things. Check out how Lara and Robynn have completely different approaches to setting boundaries with their scales…

Lara’s Approach to the Scale
To be completely honest, often times I have to ask my husband to hide my scale. Yes. HIDE it. I have a complete love/hate relationship with the scale–I love it when it shows me the number I desire–but I hate it any other time. Not to mention, I hate the way it determines my mood for the rest of the day. If I weigh in as soon as I get up and, before I step on the scale I feel great, but then a number flashes that is higher than expected, I instantly go from feeling great to horrible. This not only causes me to be in a bad mood the rest of the day, but my smart eating goes out the window. At that point, I’ve lost all peace because I am FRUSTRATED!! I especially feel this way if I devote several days to being more physically active and then the scale shows no movement or a gain. Talk about wanting to LOSE IT!!

When I can tell I am feeling this way with the scale, I’ve learned I need to step away from it for a while. I know what is required to maintain my weight–I just need to eat in a way that I have peace and continue to stay as active as I do every day. So why throw a scale in the mix and mess with my emotions when I already know what is needed to successfully maintain? And why chance putting myself in a situation that may cause a throw-in-the-towel moment, leading to inactivity and porking out for days?

The scale has too much influence on me…in a bad way. When I start losing peace with it, I go ask my husband to hide it until I feel like I can handle it again. Call me crazy, but that’s what works for me! By not knowing my weight# I actually feel better and make smarter choices on a daily basis. That being said, I do think the scale can be a good “reality check” so I don’t eliminate it from my life entirely. I just don’t let it control me on a daily or weekly basis.

Robynn’s Approach to the Scale
My approach to the scale is different than Lara’s. Whereas, she loses peace if she is around it too much, the scale serves as an accountability partner for me. Daily I check in with it. And daily I either get to celebrate or cut my losses and move on. Stepping on the scale for me gives closure to the past and a new beginning for each day.

That’s what works for me and what gives me peace – my approach. What’s yours?

Posse Discussion: Do you have a magic weight# in your head of when you think your life will be perfect? How realistic is that number?

Click Here for Day 16!

DAY 14- Insanity with The Scale

January 14, 2015January 17, 2015 | Robynn Coates

How many times have I begun a diet, calendar in hand, marking off three months? For some reason that was always the magic number. I just knew that my dieting efforts would reap the desired results in just three short months. And what started off the first time as three months actually turned into decades! How did I not see the insanity there?

What gets me is the time I wasted. The moments in life I passed by because I was chasing the diet-myth carrot stating diets are the end-all, be-all to weight problems. For years I put my life on hold because I couldn’t really enjoy life until I was a certain number on the scale.

Those days are over. So, now I am focusing on #PEACE. Yes, I still know the optimal weight zone that makes me feel the best, (it’s actually about a 7 lb. weight range) but one thing I have learned the hard way is this:

A number on the scale has no power to give you peace.

Turns out I was doing things in reverse. Trying to get the number first so that I could have peace later.

Flawed thinking. It wasn’t until I settled the peace issue that I could get to my optimal weight zone and do so in peace.

Are you like I was and doing things in reverse? Do you think that if you could just get down to a certain number, peace would naturally be the result? If so, I hope you’ll go for #PEACE. Then and only then will you be able to really enjoy your optimal weight zone when you finally get there. 🙂

Posse Discussion:

Part 1: What is your current level #peace with the scale?
Part 2: How would your life change if you replaced your focus from the number on the scale to the #peace?

Click Here for Day #15!

DAY 13- How to Have Peace with Your Body

January 13, 2015January 14, 2015 | Robynn Coates

There are many ways to have peace with your body and today we are going to share four of them:

#1: Realize that everyone has to deal with imperfect circumstances. We thought we’d share this video to encourage you that, although things may look perfect on the outside, they may not be as they seem.

#2: Focus on your uniqueness and eliminate comparisons with others. Often what steals our peace is comparing our body image to others. We can relate to this! Read Robynn’s story about her obsession with Carrie Underwood Thighs, here!

#3: Keep the balance of your peace across the board. Working out seven days a week may give you peace with your body, but at the expense of other areas of your life (such as family time). That being said, how can you find a compromise to avoid your peace being off kilter in other areas of your life? Could you have peace with working out 4 days a week (even though you won’t have as toned of abs) but also keep the peace at home by using the 3 other days as “family time”?

#4: Use words of affirmations to retrain your thoughts. If you want to reprogram how you feel about yourself you will have to change your negative self-talk by replacing it with positive affirmations. What do you want your life to look like? Begin speaking your desires for your life rather than all the negative things you dislike about it. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “We become what we think about all day long.” This is a powerful habit that can literally change your life! When creating your own affirmations begin with “I am . . .” or “I have . . .”, keep it in the present tense, and keep it positive. An example would be, “I am living at peace with food and have a healthy and fit body I love!”

You could use also use the serenity prayer. See our examples below and then create your own serenity prayer…

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change:
For Robynn, help her accept that her drumstick-shaped thighs won’t be exactly what she wants.
For Lara, help her accept her larger-upper body since some of it is genetic.

courage to change the things I can;
For Robynn, give her courage to be okay with the body results she gets in exercising no more than 30-minutes a day (the amount of time that brings her peace)
For Lara, give her courage to have confidence in the arms that she has, as she is not willing to invest the time required for toned arms.

and wisdom to know the difference.
Help me accept my imperfect self and focus on the most important things in life.

Posse Discussion:

Out of the 4 suggestions we give to finding peace with your body, which one do you think will be most helpful and why?

Click Here for Day 14!

DAY 12- Week of Body Image & Scale

January 12, 2015January 14, 2015 | Robynn Coates

This week we are talking about body image and the scale. This is an important aspect of Peace with Food because what we eat impacts our appearance and the number on the scale. So how to we get peace in these areas?

For starters, we need to end the Insane Cycle. You know–that crazy cycle we get on when we obsess about an area of our body or a number on the scale. We get so fixated on these things we don’t think clearly anymore! We experience extreme highs (such as finally hitting a goal weight) and then extreme lows (such as gaining all the weight back after reaching our goal weight), and then we make ourselves go on another extreme diet in hopes we’ll have a better outcome next time.

Or how about every time we look in the mirror and have feelings of disgust as we stare at areas of our bodies that we hate? This extreme focus on our physique causes us to pass up opportunities to go swimming with our kids or a double date with our friends from work. It causes us to miss out on life. with Body

There are things about a person’s body that they can control, and others that they can’t. They can lose the weight–and we’ll help them do that–but part of having peace means accepting areas of their body that may be unrealistic to change. For example, if they are always envying girls that are tall with long legs, having peace will mean letting go of the fact that they are only 5’3″.

We have always been goal-oriented people but when we finally realized–by accepting imperfections about our bodies–we could actually eliminate the daily pain of always wishing for something different. Once we did this, we began to have more peace in our lives.

We are not saying you need to give up on yourself or use what we say as an excuse to eat crummy. What we are saying is often times we can get so focused on something that we don’t zoom out and realize that some of the things we are chasing are either unrealistic or too big of a step for now. You will have to get rid of the All-or-Nothing mindset and be willing to tackle small, achievable, goals in order to have long-term, realistic success.

So this week, we encourage you to “zoom out”and figure out what is a realistic, bite-sized goal you can make to achieve your weight-loss success.

Posse Discussion:

1: What is one area of your body that you wish you could change?
2: What is your current level #peace in regards to your body image? (Record date and # in your notebook)

Click Here for Day 13!

DAY 11- Recap on FOOD

January 11, 2015January 13, 2015 | Robynn Coates

This week we talked about food. Here is a summary of the posts from this week’s discussion (click on underlined words to read that post):

-Making calories count by using a tool we call Don’t Waste Your Calories.
-The importance of Knowing Yourself when it comes to food.
-Participating in The Peace Dare by taking a closer look of the foods in your kitchen.
-Learning new eating strategies by how Lara eats.
-Learning new eating strategies by how Robynn eats.
-How to Disarm the Foods That Control You. with Food

On Day 1, we had you rate your level #peace in regards to food. After discussing food this week, we want you to rate your current level #peace again.

Posse Discussion:

In regards to food, what was your level #peace on Day 1? What was it today? Has your number increased or decreased? Why?

Join us tomorrow as we dive into Body Image and the Scale!

Click Here for Day 12!

DAY 10- Disarming the Foods That Control You

January 10, 2015January 11, 2015 | Robynn Coates

Have you ever had foods that you just couldn’t get out of your mind? Foods that had a hold on you and controlled you?

Been there.

For years it seemed that I was tormented by my favorite sweets. Cookie dough, dessert bars, and other confections were my downfall. I just loved them. But they controlled me and I hated that.

Then one day, I had a breakthrough moment. It was an Aha Moment for me and the beginning of learning the skill of disarming the foods that controlled me. Let me share with you the secret I discovered.

At the time I was on a date ball kick. I think I had seen someone on the Food Network make them and was hooked. In case you’ve never had date balls, I’ll describe them. They are this gooey sweet treat made with melted butter, sugar, candies dates, pecans, and rice crispies. Because you make this confection on the stove and not in the oven they are accessible throughout the preparation and cooking time.

So there I stood at the stove, with a pan full of gooey-ness and easy access. Of course I was taste testing the entire time. My experience was similar to Lara’s in Bite #1 vs Bite 21: Bite #1: AWESOME! Bite #2: YUM . . . need I say more? But by Bite #10 (or probably even before that) I should have been finished, but I just couldn’t stop.

This scenario was played out too many times to count, but on this particular day I had had enough. I literally said out loud, “Date balls you will not defeat me! I will defeat you!!!” It was game on.

Right then and there I came up with a plan to get victory over these date balls. Instead of making the full recipe I cut it down to a fraction of the original recipe. I did this by deciding how many points (Weight Watchers) I wanted to consume and then made only that amount. Let me tell ya, it worked like a charm.

The next time date balls called my name I was able to make them, eat them all, and do it all guilt-free. I got closure, met a need, and best of all won a victory.

So, why not try it out? Next time you are faced with temptation try cutting it down to a portion that is moderate and will give you peace. With enough practice you will begin developing new habits and perfecting the skill of disarming the foods that control you.

Posse Discussion:

Part 1: Name one food item that controls you
Part 2: Rate your current level #peace with that food item (see Peace Chart below)
Part 3: Describe how you can disarm that food item (make a smaller batch, order a kid-sized meal, split a meal with someone, etc)

Click Here for Day #11!